Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg generated international attention last week for his entry into Washington politics. In launching a new political group, he positioned himself as a leading advocate to help aspiring entrepreneurs and other ambitious immigrants achieve the American dream.

Yet behind the scenes on Capitol Hill, Facebook lobbyists were engaged in another form of politics: pressing to insert a few new words helpful to Facebook’s business interests into a sprawling legislative proposal.

That would be the first time in the history of the world that immigrationist rhetoric was ever deployed in the service of special interests.

The deft maneuvering came during the drafting of the new bipartisan Senate immigration proposal being released this week. It underscores the rising clout of a young company that is following the road paved by such technology forebears as Microsoft and Google, moving from indifference toward Washington to persistent, sophisticated engagement.

The payoff on the immigration provision could be substantial, allowing Facebook and other technology companies to avoid a requirement that they make a “good-faith” effort to recruit Americans for jobs before hiring from overseas. Facebook could also sidestep proposed rules that would force it to pay much higher wages to many foreign workers.

... The new carve-out for Facebook and other firms, critics fear, could help companies evade the stricter proposed regulations being hailed by lawmakers as a way to crack down on ­abuses.

Facebook officials declined to comment on the specific H1B provision, instead couching the company’s lobbying on the issue as part of a broader push to improve the country’s economy.

Ask not what your Economy can do for you -- ask what you can do for your Economy.

... “Modernizing the immigration system so it helps the U.S. economy and responsibly promotes innovation is a top priority for Facebook and all of our tech colleagues,” Jodi Seth, a Facebook spokeswoman, said by e-mail.

If only Facebook's spokeswoman were named Jodi Sith.

“We are working with the Hill and others to explain how our businesses work and to make sure reforms don’t have unintended consequences that might undermine the purpose of the bill.”

I bet Facebook doesn't want unintended consequences. They paid good money to have the bill repurposed and they want what they paid for.

Facebook faces stricter regulations because the company recently surpassed a key legal threshold and is now considered to be “dependent” on H1B visas. The U.S. government classifies companies as dependent when more than 15 percent of their workers hold H1Bs. Facebook said it is “just over” the 15 percent line.

The new H1B regulations in the Senate deal are aimed largely at big outsourcing firms — most of them based in India — that employ tens of thousands of new H1B workers each year. More severe limits would be placed on companies with more than half of their workers on the visas, including stiff fees and an outright ban to take effect in 2016 on these firms hiring additional H1B workers.

... Then this year, as momentum built for an immigration bill, Facebook began pushing for an even broader exemption.

Working with lobbyists for Compete America, a trade group representing U.S. tech firms, Facebook helped secure a workaround: Any worker in the process of obtaining a green card “shall not be counted” toward the 15 percent threshold.

That means Facebook and other companies could file just enough applications to fall back below the 15 percent line. The language, pulled from a draft copy of the legislation, was reviewed by The Washington Post.

Supporters of the workaround said severe backlogs in the green-card program have left many workers for Facebook and other firms on H1Bs, driving up the companies’ percentage.

“We need to crack down on firms that abuse the H1B system, but some companies’ H1B number is inflated because their employees remain stuck in the backlog,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a key architect of the new immigration plan. “It shouldn’t be seen as a company’s fault when the government simply takes too long to process green cards.”

In an op-ed for The Post last week, Zuckerberg questioned why there are not enough H1B visas for immigrants while introducing his new group, FWD.us.
“Why do we offer so few H-1B visas for talented specialists that the supply runs out within days of becoming available each year,” Zuckerberg said, “even though we know each of these jobs will create two or three more American jobs in return?”

... Joel Kaplan, the head of Facebook’s Washington office, was a senior aide in the George W. Bush White House, where he worked with his friend Cesar Conda, now chief of staff to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a key immigration negotiator.

Kaplan was a driving force behind pressing the lawmakers to include the green-card exception, according to people familiar with the deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private meetings.

... Without the exception, Corley added, some firms might be forced to pay foreign workers more than U.S. employees performing the same jobs.

You mean, without this exception, Facebook might, conceivably, have had an incentive to hire Americans? The horror, the horror ...

... Bruce Morrison, a lobbyist for U.S. electrical engineers, said the Facebook provision creates a substantial loophole. The measure requires only that green-card applications be at least “pending” — meaning U.S. government approval is not necessary for a temporary H1B worker to be classified as permanent by a company seeking to avoid stricter regulations.

“It could just be a matter of paper pushing,” said Morrison, a former Democratic congressman from Connecticut who wrote key pieces of the H1B visa law in 1990. “All you have to do is file a piece of paper, which doesn’t even have to be approved or approvable.”

68 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Let's see your logic here. Zuck has created 4000 very high paying jobs, yet he is just out to enrich himself by importing H1-B slave labor. While you, having created precisely zero jobs, get to take potshots at him. You are what is wrong with America today, while Zuck is what is right.

Immigration has never been about the economy. It's about altering the racial dynamics of the country to prevent a potential NAZI movement from taking over the US in the future.

Divide and conquer is one the oldest strategy known to man. Those who know how to utilize it, and/or know how to defend against it, will prevail in the end. Those who are ignorant of it are bound to suffer. And they should suffer. Life is harsh on the ignorant.

For many positions, it is indeed true that there are few to no Americans available.

I was the head of a quant group on Wall St for 20+ years. Every year, we would attempt to hire a bunch of STEM PhDs. There were few native-born whites available - the few Americans doing STEM PhDs (who actually tend to be outstanding) planned to go into academia. The top candidates available were generally Indians and Chinese, with a smattering of east Europeans and others (one of the best candidates I ever interviewed was an Argentine of Scottish descent at Cal Tech).

With due respect, Steve, when it comes to high end quant hiring, you and your commentators have no clue as to what you are talking about. Of course we would love to have hired native born Americans - for one thing, it would vastly improve the communication between the quants and traders/salespeople, who uniformly tended to be Americans with MBAs. Unfortunately, at the high end, American quants are simply not available.They have either decided to do an MBA (better pay), or else plan to go into academic research.

What was it that Dr. King said - something about judging folks by "the content of their character"?

Without all these foreigner STEM workers, how did we ever land men on the moon and return them safely to earth? Now we have a tsunami influx of foreigner STEM jockeys and we get...social media. Guess that there won't soon be any flash mobs on the moon, huh?

facebook does no innovation. nothing creative is coming out of there, and they have no need for any special employees or rare talents that can't be found in the US. their business model is the same as microsoft, defend turf, but with the innovation quotient of yahoo. in other words, almost none.

even microsoft pioneered the development of new interesting stuff from time to time. facebook never will, ever. the only use facebook has for new employees is simple growth of their existing, static business model. zuckerberg has no new, interesting ideas for software, no great new projects, no redefining innovation on the horizon. he stole his one good idea and that's it.

his singular use for visa employees is to cut labor costs for himself, period. steve blocks all my comments about facebook, maybe he'll let this one through. but i doubt it.

David Sirota at Salon: "Let’s hope the Boston Marathon bomber is a white American".

His main points seem to be that (1) there is no overarching pattern to muslim terrorist violence, (2) the left never ever has stooped so low as to try to score political points or draw any political conclusions from the actions of Timothy McVey or Eric Robert Rudolph, and (3) there should be no policy implications (for example regarding immigration) from Muslim terrorism.

""""For many positions, it is indeed true that there are few to no Americans available.... you and your commentators have no clue as to what you are talking about...They have either decided to do an MBA (better pay), or else plan to go into academic research. """"

"""""Let's see your logic here. Zuck has created 4000 very high paying jobs, yet he is just out to enrich himself by importing H1-B slave labor. While you, having created precisely zero jobs, get to take potshots at him. You are what is wrong with America today, while Zuck is what is right."""""

Are you seriously going to contend that the tech industry is not out to depress wages?

Unfortunately, at the high end, American quants are simply not available.They have either decided to do an MBA (better pay), or else plan to go into academic research.

What if you had offered twice the salary? Four times? Ten times? Was there NO amount of money that could have pulled these people away from academia to a private-sector job? You've admitted they exist; you just weren't paying a competitive rate. If you're competing with MBA programs for the people you need, you have to match their pay level.

As always, always, always, whether we're talking about fruit-picking, meat-chopping, or number-crunching: there are no jobs Americans won't do; there are only jobs Americans won't do for the salary employers are currently choosing to offer. Thanks for proving it yet once again.

"For many positions, it is indeed true that there are few to no Americans available.......Unfortunately, at the high end, American quants are simply not available.They have either decided to do an MBA (better pay)"

Isn't that the point? If Wall Street paid the quants like it paid the MBAs, they would be awash in American quants like they are in MBAs.

If foreigners today had the same communication and cutlural skills for the job as the American traders/sales people, the locals would get the bullet in favour of the foreigners, assuming the foreigners are willing to work for less.

Unfortunately, at the high end, American quants are simply not available.They have either decided to do an MBA (better pay), or else plan to go into academic research.

And why, pray tell, do you think that is?

What if engineering was, on average, as highly paid and prestigious as investment banking or big law? I suspect quite a few bright young Americans might suddenly become more interested in STEM. Or perhaps you believe they simply have an innate predilection for the former. Somehow, I doubt most kids dream of trading junk bonds at Goldman when they grow up.

"I was the head of a quant group on Wall St for 20+ years.... Unfortunately, at the high end, American quants are simply not available.They have either decided to do an MBA (better pay), or else plan to go into academic research. "

Hey, Anonymous, presumably your education (probably an MBA) didn't teach you how the free market works - in this case the quants should be paid more possibly to convince some of the MBAs to become quants instead. Of course 'free market' to you means making money by any means, including using government to rig labor markets so that you make more money.

Likewise, you're probably full of yourself and think you've 'earned' every dollar ever been paid to you and deserve a tax cut because of all of your 'job creation' (government bailouts and other subsidies).

Just because someone creates a job does not mean we have to grab our ankles for everything they suggest.

no clue... at the high end, American quants are simply not available.

Part of the point here is that if your firm had to start outbidding academia and MBA land, we would get more natives in the pipeline.

From what I've seen in this area, foreigners are overrated and natives are underrated. Fashion drives some of this.

I've seen jobs filled here that aren't even needed, that have little measurable result, they are just slots funded from back in the day. Wall Street quants? WTF? If they disappeared tomorrow, who would miss them?

If we have no natives for the position, is it really needed? Where is it written in stone that all these slots need the best person on the planet? How much value is facebook really adding to our lives?

You are what is wrong with America today, while Zuck is what is right.

No, Zuck is emblematic of a consumptive business model rapidly finding its natural level: an advertising medium reliant on indirect payment. Zuck is just trying to maintain the original margins for his stupid, cluttered electronic bulletin board. Porn links are the logical next step. Zuck is wrong, wrong, wrong for this country.

And then there's this:

Of course we would love to have hired native born Americans ... Unfortunately, at the high end, American quants are simply not available. They have either decided to do an MBA (better pay), or else plan to go into academic research.

Then you need to 1) pay more, and/or 2) offer better working conditions, and/or 3) contract with academics for the data-crunching. Devote some resources to figuring out that, Mr. Master of the Universe, instead of paying lobbyists to rig government policy in your favor.

How much value are these hungry Asian quants adding, any way? I seem to recall an event not so long ago where their models said housing values never go down and risk can be bundled, sliced, diced and tranched away. Then everybody else had to pay for their TWO TRILLION DOLLAR mistake.

"Former Hill staffer and K Street nonprofit associate. Future grad student. Recently unemployed sequestration victim with lots of time, little money, and an unhealthy knowledge of DC's think tanks, Hill receptions, and speaker series. They can kick me out of the club, but they cant stop me from crashing their free events, eating their free food, totally ignoring their discussions, and then anonymously making fun of them on the internet. It's basically like Wedding Crashers, minus all the sex and partying...OR IS IT??? https://twitter.com/PanelCrasher"

I was the head of a quant group on Wall St for 20+ years. Every year, we would attempt to hire a bunch of STEM PhDs. There were few native-born whites available - the few Americans doing STEM PhDs (who actually tend to be outstanding) planned to go into academia. The top candidates available were generally Indians and Chinese, with a smattering of east Europeans and others (one of the best candidates I ever interviewed was an Argentine of Scottish descent at Cal Tech).

With due respect, Steve, when it comes to high end quant hiring, you and your commentators have no clue as to what you are talking about. Of course we would love to have hired native born Americans - for one thing, it would vastly improve the communication between the quants and traders/salespeople, who uniformly tended to be Americans with MBAs. Unfortunately, at the high end, American quants are simply not available.They have either decided to do an MBA (better pay), or else plan to go into academic research.

My God, it's the perfect synopsis of Neo-Feudalism and The Reserve Army of the Unemployed.

The Neo-Feudalist landlords [the JDs and the MBAs and the fiat-electron-mongers] need a steady supply of quant-labor to run their sweatshops, and they even admit that IF THEY WERE TO PAY THE QUANT-LABOR AS MUCH AS THEY PAID THE MBA-LANDLORDS, THEN THERE WOULD BE PLENTY OF NATIVE TALENT READY AND WILLING TO PERFORM QUANT-LABOR, but because paying the serfs as much as the landlords would upset the apple cart, the landlords instead demand to import an unlimited supply of serfs so as maintain their balance of power.

In Econ 101 terms: If you don't like the supply and demand curves you're looking at, then just cheat, and artificially increase the supply of what you do want [supplicant kowtowing mandarin-eunuch serfs], and artificially decrease the demand for what you don't want [uppity serfs who don't know their place in life].

Now I've got a lot more to say to you, kiddo, but I know from a wealth of experience here at iSteve that Komment Kontrol won't allow me to proceed any further, so we'll just leave it at that.

Has Zuck sent some of his people here to leave comments? Mark Twain once referred to "core pone opinions," i.e., the opinions of people shilling for their employer, the master who keeps them in corn pone (provender). Such people would defend Attila the Hun if his office could cut a sufficiently large check.

Dig some of the recent tropes.

- Jesus didn't create a single job. Nor did the Old Testament prophets. So you can throw away the Sermon on the Mount and the Torah. Morality means cash value, period.

- Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, which reminds us of Bastiat's principle of "the seen and the unseen" in economics, applies only to government action. It does not even exist in the private sector. Especially not in regard to what my Friends are doing. So if my Friend tweaks an economy through legislation, causing harm to countless citizens in the future, we should ignore that because he created a few jobs now, many for non-citizens. This proves I'm a tough guy who understands economics, unlike you.

- We tried, we really and honestly tried to hire Americans, but there are no programmers who are American. There are no engineers who are American. American schools no longer produce engineers, programmers, or scientists. Well, they don't produce any who are qualified (see video link above), i.e., who will work as an indentured servant for peanuts.

Keep 'em coming. Dig deep into the recesses of the "Ayn Rand" Institute and come back with your very best shot. I'll be around.

Every year, we would attempt to hire a bunch of STEM PhDs. There were few native-born whites available - the few Americans doing STEM PhDs (who actually tend to be outstanding) planned to go into academia.

Well perhaps this is because our top universities -- just another arm of the Cathedral -- are stuffed to the gills with foreign students while U.S. applicants are turned away.

A sensible nation would not allow any foreign students into its top universities. But then we long since stopped being a nation.

With due respect, Steve, when it comes to high end quant hiring, you and your commentators have no clue as to what you are talking about.

Yes, let's go off down some wierd rabbit hole no one is too overbothered by. We're not talking people with exotic postgrad degrees. We're talking basic computer and engineering positions, all of which could be supplied with American labor--as has been pointed out time and again by guys like Norm Matloff.

Mark's business does not hire many illegal immirgants. In fact only Big Ag and the resturant and Hotel industry and some manufactoring like food processing and garment work hire a lot of illegal immirgants and so does meat packing. Another would be maid service and janorial work. Most of these billionaires except land and real esate barons like DOn Bren of the Irvine company don't benefit from illegal immirgants. Also, the home construcation would be another industry.

"I was the head of a quant group on Wall St for 20+ years...With due respect, Steve, when it comes to high end quant hiring, you and your commentators have no clue as to what you are talking about."

Because God knows how much authority the quants deserve on on the question of what's good for the economic well being of the people of America.

Excuse me, who doesn't have a clue about what, exactly? How would we be worse off if there were many, many fewer quants?

I have no doubt but that reducing immigration in technology will make some things more inefficient. But the question has always been, so what? What do we gain by increased immigration that can make up for what we lose? And, even more to the point, who gains, and who loses?

What have the quants on Wall Street done for us? Devised crackpot schemes to pull money out of the economy to benefit the elite of the elite while putting at risk the finances of the rest of America -- all the while telling us doubters, "Back off, man, we're scientists!"

Really, you think is a convincing example for the importance of technology immigration? Can you be so rich that you've bought an invisibility cloak to throw over all of reality?

If you want to make this case, I suggest that, first, you prove you and your fellow quants aren't the most destructive sort of parasites on the American economy.

Let's see your logic here. Zuck has created 4000 very high paying jobs, yet he is just out to enrich himself by importing H1-B slave labor. While you, having created precisely zero jobs, get to take potshots at him. You are what is wrong with America today, while Zuck is what is right."

They have either decided to do an MBA (better pay), or else plan to go into academic research."

You have no idea what you are talking about. "Planning" on an academic career is planning to be unemployed. There are next to no academic jobs available, and many of the ones that are available go to foreign hires. And many Americans have already factored in the futility of pursuing technical careers in the face of businesses (not industries - businesses) of the kind that you represent preferring to hire foreign coolies.

Interesting how this post has already brought out so many tech sector toadies.

I'm confused about the first post here. I wasn't aware that anybody, even his fellow open borders types, actually liked Zuckerberg or thought he was "what was right about America." Kind of weird to see some random commentator shilling for him.

I was the head of a quant group on Wall St for 20+ years. Every year, we would attempt to hire a bunch of STEM PhDs. There were few native-born whites available - the few Americans doing STEM PhDs (who actually tend to be outstanding) planned to go into academia.

That's not the normal case at all. Where I work we hire H1-B people all the time through contracting agencies (which gets the company around rules requiring posting jobs). These guys are not the creme of the crop by any means, and there are plenty of native-born Americans available to do the job. But they tend to be older and not willing to work for what we're paying.

It's a feedback loop. Who in his right mind would go into software development when the Zuckerbergs of the world bribe Congress to flood the market every few years with foreign workers? Surprise! The smart kids look at this and get a "Law and Society" degree instead so they can get a government job.

"Anonymous said...For many positions, it is indeed true that there are few to no Americans available."

Spoken like your typical Cultural Marxist commissar who now makes sure absolutely sure no qualified white male need apply. Does anybody who is not a fully indoctrinated New Lefty from Oberlin, Carleton or Reed college or the Ivy League work as an HR administrator anymore? Or is it just impossible to read a single article remotely skeptical of the atrocity known as the H1-B without some boiler room troll in the employee of the Open Borders Lobby or the Immigration Lawyers cluttering the comment sections with the same flim-flam talking points about how no US citizen qualified could be found.

I worked for two of the largest interest rate and energy derivatives trading desks on LaSalle Street in Chicago.The firms had pently of PHDs resettled from SoCal who previously worked for cutting edge aerospace firms who went on to get the latest and highly prized MBA in financial engineering at the University of Chicago. Of course men over the age of 35 with families who have had to make mid career adjustments expect and deserve higher salaries than a 25 year old H1-B indentured servant. And lets be honest that is the nut of the problem.

"With due respect, Steve, when it comes to high end quant hiring, you and your commentators have no clue as to what you are talking about. Of course we would love to have hired native born Americans - for one thing, it would vastly improve the communication between the quants and traders/salespeople, who uniformly tended to be Americans with MBAs. Unfortunately, at the high end, American quants are simply not available.They have either decided to do an MBA (better pay [ed: emphasis added]), or else plan to go into academic research."

Your problem is that you want to pay physical science PhD's (six years of work) less than MBA's (two years of work), then you're absolutely shocked that you find practically no takers for your generous offer. You should consider fixing that little problem first.

"Let's see your logic here. Zuck has created 4000 very high paying jobs, yet he is just out to enrich himself by importing H1-B slave labor. While you, having created precisely zero jobs, get to take potshots at him. You are what is wrong with America today, while Zuck is what is right."

I could easily drum a up an extremely long list of fantastic actions George Bush took as President; does this immunize him from criticism for the Iraq disaster because he did far more "great things for America" in his life than I (or you) ever will?

Let's see your logic here. Zuck has created 4000 very high paying jobs, yet he is just out to enrich himself by importing H1-B slave labor. While you, having created precisely zero jobs, get to take potshots at him. You are what is wrong with America today, while Zuck is what is right.

I'm amazed you see bribing Congress as an indication of "what is right" with America.

You know, I'm not a quant, but I knew Quant # 1. Ed Thorpe. White Wasp. Nice guy, very smart. This was over 30 years ago. Many of the original quants WERE white. Why not now?Because immigration made the quant field a poor return on educational investment. If you would simply pay more, or REDUCE THE NUMBER OF IMMIGRANT QUANTS, and you might be amazed how many AMERICANS become quants. It's not rocket science - or even quantitative analysis. It's basic supply and demand economics.

And yet strangely, the business people who stand to benefit from this bill (and others like it) routinely put up absolutely enormous sums of money to ensure that this legislation gets passed into law. Assuming arguendo that your theory is correct, the business people sure are behaving oddly, aren't they? Why waste all that precious money on something that's entirely not about them?

I've seen this theory trotted out quite a bit both recently and in the past: that the Chamber of Commerce, billionaires, et alia have nothing to do with amnesty and that the motive impetus for this bill is coming 110% from leftist ideologues and such sorts. The theory is transparently and laughably false, of course, but it makes me wonder why so many otherwise rational people seem to believe in it so fervently. It probably has something to do with the naive hero worship of the wealthy on the right and a complete lack of willingness to believe anything even slightly negative about them.

"Immigration has never been about the economy. It's about altering the racial dynamics of the country to prevent a potential NAZI movement from taking over the US in the future."

Very true! Young Jews of the last 30 years have been systematically brainwashed to believe that this country's WASP establishment along with White Christian Middle America was complicit if not outright in league with the Nazis to exterminate the world Jewry. This New Left revisionist garbage was all over campus when I in college in the eighties. I remember Jewish friends who went from be cheery and nearly fully assimilated Americans to the worst sort of anti-Christian paranoid neurotics right out of a Woody Allen film almost overnight.

Anyone remember the efforts by the SPLC equivalent of Holocaust exploitation The David Wyman Institute, which put out the infamous Ford Foundation financed "The Abandonment of the Jews" "reverse blood libel" back in the 1980s?

Here is the last output from the Cultural Marxist historical revisionists just released in time for this year's big amnesty push.

Historian Rafael Medoff says Franklin Delano Roosevelt failed to take relatively simple measures that would have saved significant numbers of Jews during the Holocaust, because his vision for America only encompassed having a small number of Jews.

"In his private, unguarded moments, FDR repeatedly made unfriendly remarks about Jews, especially his belief that Jews were overrepresented in many professions and exercised too much influence and control on society,”

It is sad to see moronic hyper-partisan "conservative" clowns fall for this nonsense and make fools out of themselves in the Daily Caller's comment section. The sickening Anti-American revisionism of the Wyman Institute has been repeatedly refuted by Rabbi Robert N. Rosen in numerous C-Span appearances and books.

You never would have thought that the President that Hitler, Goebbels and Lord Haw-Haw referred to as "That Jew President" secretly had it so out for the Jews.

For instance if FDR had not done everything possible short of a unconstitutional unilateral declaration of war to help the British hold on in North Africa from 1940 to 1942, Hitler would have rolled over Egypt and taken less than a week's work wiping out Zionist Palestine. Meanwhile in the Pacific the Marines retook Guadalcanal using WWI issue bolt action rifles.

Yan Shen makes the same arguments that farmers do about stoop labor: "at the prices we are willing to pay we cant find Americans."

He is right, of course.

And he's not the only one. I can't find a decent, cute, under 20, disease-free two dollar whore, either. I share his concern for the American Economy. The last time I priced a greedy American prostitute she was asking a minimum (get this) of $300 dollars! What is it with these American women! If they aren't willing to work for international wages then we need to import more Chinese and Indians to do the work American women won't do!

And those damn American PhDs! What? Do they think us New York Bankers are made of money or something? Dont they realize my bonus got cut over 90%. Goldman Sachs gave me a $10 million bonus just five years ago and now I am down to less than one million! That's One. Million. Dollars! How am I supposed to survive on that in Manhattan! Have you priced Lamborghinis lately? They sure as hell don't come as cheap as a Porsche, buddy!

[Whew! Sorry. I just had to vent. Life can be so cruel as an investment banker! Now you've got me all verklempt!]

"I was the head of a quant group on Wall St for 20+ years...With due respect, Steve, when it comes to high end quant hiring, you and your commentators have no clue as to what you are talking about."

Because God knows how much authority the quants deserve on on the question of what's good for the economic well being of the people of America.

Excuse me, who doesn't have a clue about what, exactly? How would we be worse off if there were many, many fewer quants?

I have no doubt but that reducing immigration in technology will make some things more inefficient. But the question has always been, so what? What do we gain by increased immigration that can make up for what we lose? And, even more to the point, who gains, and who loses?

Exactly. Hey, Mr. Quant, how about quantifying all the immigration effects that never get quantified together? We're talking our immigration policy as it stands, not some "PhD's only allowed" fantasy, since absolutely no such scenario ever makes it to the table. That means the 11 million illegals, mixed in with everyone else. Not a fair comparison? Maybe not, but since nobody from your and other professions on the right end of the bell curve seems to be splitting such hairs in the media or lobbying efforts, that's the way it goes. That means quantifying the welfare, section 8, ESL programs in schools, increased numbers of the native-born displaced into unemployment and EBT - the whole nine yards get quantified with your H1-B "job creation"- because your high-skilled professions don't have the inclination or balls to argue for anything other than open borders. I have yet to see anyone in tech, finance, or academia argue otherwise - so why not honestly quantify what your associations are lobbying for?

I do feel sorry for Zuck. I mean, after creating 4000 indian jobs right here in America and this is all the thanks he gets. Why he should really show you guys. Yeah! He should move his entire operation to his motherland, Israel. They are The New High Tech Powerhouse of the World. I am sure they would just love to get 4,000 highly qualified Indians and Chinese to grow the Israeli economy! Yeah, Zuck! You show all these ungrateful goyim just what they are missing out on! Make Aliyah today. Not "next year in Jerusalem", make it "this year!" Why should these ungrateful damn American goyim get the benefit of your brilliance when Israel is yearning to resettle talented people from anywhere in the world! I'll call Nefesh b'Nefesh today and see if we can arrange a few flights to Ben Gurion ASAP.

Chuckles Schumer: "some companies’ H1B number is inflated because their employees remain stuck in the backlog”

In other words, these companies want to exclusively hire cheap immigrants: current H-1B holders, and former H-1B holders.

"Immigration has never been about the economy. It's about altering the racial dynamics of the country to prevent a potential NAZI movement from taking over the US in the future."

Because the best way to ensure that is to flood the country with different races who will all be at each other's throats, thanks to the Left's using racial animosity as a weapon.

How many multi-millionaires did Microsoft, pre-H-1B era, create? Thousands. How many has Facebook created? It's stock ownership is skewed towards the top more than most old software companies were. It's one-time second in command, an immigrant, rejected his (voluntary) US citizenship to avoid paying taxes. Zuckerberg stole the Facebook idea from the Winklevoss brothers. Zuckerberg changes privacy practices on a whim, always demanding that you opt-out rather than opt-in. Facebook's founders might well be the tech industry's all-time biggest douchebags.

Zuckerberg's just the next big step down on the stairway to oblivion. We've been increasingly willing to tolerate political crooks, increasingly willing to tolerate the takeover of our democracy by the Supremes, increasingly willing not to punish people who commit enormous crimes, like the housing bubble. He sees all the corruption come before him and that just became his starting point.

With due respect, Steve, when it comes to high end quant hiring, you and your commentators have no clue as to what you are talking about.

Apparently getting the "best and brightest" is analogous to ore-mining. Tons and tons of earth must be processed to obtain those few pounds or ounces of the desired metal. Likewise, the smartest guys in the world (with 20+ years on Wall Street!) haven't been able to figure out how to get a relatively small number of gold-nugget high-end employees for their companies short of lobbying the guv to open wide the immigration gates, so they can sluice down half the population of India and China in search of the requisite skills.

I just can't help but think that there's a more efficient, less environmentally damaging way to do this, if indeed the need actually exists. But what do I know?

Immigration has never been about the economy. It's about altering the racial dynamics of the country to prevent a potential NAZI movement from taking over the US in the future.

This is the dumbest thing I've read in at least a month (unless I missed the sarcasm). The National Socialists were a backlash movement among Germans that thought their race and culture was under siege.

If the goal is to prevent the rise of race-based fascism in the US whoever's arranging more immigration is pushing the social dynamics in exactly the wrong direction.

This is the dumbest thing I've read in at least a month (unless I missed the sarcasm). The National Socialists were a backlash movement among Germans that thought their race and culture was under siege.

There is some truth in the previous commenter's suggestion that preventing a Nazi-like rise is on the agenda for mass immigration.

The late Lawrence Auster quotes Earl Raab, of Brandeis University’s Institute for Jewish Advocacy and a columnist for the Jewish Bulletin.

“[w]e have tipped beyond the point where a Nazi-Aryan party will be able to prevail in this country.” [Earl Raab, Jewish Bulletin, February 19, 1993, 23, quoted by Peter Brimelow, Alien Nation, p. 120.]

"Let's see your logic here. Zuck has created 4000 very high paying jobs, yet he is just out to enrich himself by importing H1-B slave labor. While you, having created precisely zero jobs, get to take potshots at him. You are what is wrong with America today, while Zuck is what is right."

That makes no sense. The issue is that Zuckerberg should pay higher wages to American workers. Your argument could be used to defend any unethical practice by any rich person.

".They have either decided to do an MBA (better pay), or else plan to go into academic research. "

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You can put money into your Google Wallet Balance from your bank account and send it with no service fee.

Google Wallet works from both a website and a smartphone app (Android and iPhone -- the Google Wallet app is currently available only in the U.S., but the Google Wallet website can be used in 160 countries).

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